"When the Giants Come to Town..." is my blog intended to chronicle my thoughts on San Francisco Giants baseball. My special interest is in prospects and the farm system, but of course, will comment on all aspects of the San Francisco Giants. I will also comment on baseball in general, particularly from a fantasy baseball perspective. I hope you will find the site informative, and invite you to join in the discussion.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Blast From the Past: Worst Giants Trades

Bacci's comment the other day about not getting over the Perry for McDowell trade and the Bonds for Murcer trade got me to thinking about the worst Giants trades in my memory and how I would rank them. Man, there have been some real doozies! For awhile there in the early 70's, it seemed like the Giants were Bad Trade Central! Thankfully, the AJ for Joe Nathan trade is the only really horrible one since all the way back to the Jack Clark trade, at least that I can think of. I might take a more in-depth look at these trades in the off-season, but for now, here is my list of the worst trades in Giants history in reverse order:

The Cepeda trade was bad mainly because of who the Giants traded him to. There wasn't room for both Cepeda and McCovey on the Giants and the Giants kept the right guy. Sadecki actually pitched pretty well, but had terrible luck. The big problem with the trade is it gave the Cardinals the piece they needed for 2 pennants and a flag. The Giants should have traded Cepeda to the AL.

With Joe Nathan as the closer, the Giants very possibly could have gone back to the playoffs in 2004 and would not have had to acquire Armando Benitez. On the other hand, it was pretty obvious that Felipe Alou had gotten into Nathan's head and he may well have never developed into the closer he became in Minnesota with the Giants.

Bobby Murcer was the original AJP. He actually played pretty well for the Giants with an excellent OBP, a nearly unheard of stat back in those days. The problem was he was not Bonds and he absolutely hated 1. Not being a Yankee. 2. Candlestick Park 3. Just about everything about being a Giant. His attitude was largely responsible for infecting the Giants with a defeatist attitude about Candlestick that was not overcome until Roger Craig and Mike Krukow arrived on the scene.

I think Jack Clark had forced a trade, but once again, the Giants miscalculated who they traded him to and what they got in return. A middle of the order bat was, once again, all the Cards needed for a championship run. Uribe was an upgrade on Johnny LeMaster and was a decent SS for many years, but David Green was supposed to be Clark's replacement in the OF and he was a bust.

Montanez was a decent player, but Maddox went on to become an elite CF for a championship Phillies team.

Bob Shaw was a decent pitcher, but Felipe had several All-Star caliber seasons for the Braves. Some of his stat lines may have been helpd by moving to Atlanta, which, BTW probably also gave Henry Aaron the all time HR record for almost forever.

Matty Alou almost certainly would not have developed into a batting champion without the tutelage of Harry "The Hat" Walker who was the Pirates' manager at the time. As it was, his shiny BA's were fairly empty.

Mota was just breaking in with the Giants when he was traded to the Houston Colt 45's. They flipped him to the Pirates and he became a valuable role player and really good hitter with them. He later made a name for himself as a pinch-hitter extraordinaire with the Dodgers.

Pagan never did much with the Giants, but became a nice role player with the Pirates.

What is your Worst Trade in Giants History? Are there any bad ones I missed?

24 comments:

Great list DrB.. Another trade that I didn't like was Bill Mad Dog Madlock, Lenny Randle, Dave Roberts to the Pirates for Fred Breining, Ed Whitson, and Al Holland. Madlock was a great hitter they should have built around. I cheered for him when the Bucs won the WS. This trade is similarly bad as the Jack Clark trade.

I agree that Whitson & Holland pitched well for them. I even liked Breining better then Whitson.. I think Madlock was hurt a little by hitting at Candlestick. But I enjoyed watching Madlock hit and he was a former batting champ. Giants Management was bad in those days and it was easy in those days to react negatively to everything Spec Richardson did!

I suppose I should say that the jury is still out on the Wheeler for Beltran trade. Deadline trades are incredibly complicated to sort out winners and losers from and so much is dependent on the buying team winning it all or at least making the playoffs. It didn't work out from the Giants end. Wheeler is a promising prospect, but he has yet to achieve anything at the MLB level.

Nice idea and list. Ones come to mind first are on your list. I might have Perry first, though.

Others, memory bad, but Speier, Kingman, that pitcher we sent to Houston and he killed us every time seemingly after that.

The trade I hated most was losing Bonds, but did not we get value down the line for years in the trade chain? I used to know it by heart, but EEEEEE! Had published the chain at some point.

I was also unhappy losing Dennis Cook, that pitcher who got the out at first by throwing his mitt when the ball got caught in it, I forgot his name, and we did not get anything for Remlinger, I do not think. Oh, McGaffigan is another. Breining?

I might have to think about including Knepper for Cabell in a future rundown.

BTW, Knepper was a product of Calistoga HS. I grew up in the hills above the Napa Valley so used to read about his exploits in the local weekly paper, the St. Helena Star. I remember he struck out 17 batters one game. I went to school with a guy whose brother played for St. Helena HS and got a double off Knepper.

Kingman was sold to the Mets for $150 K! Now think about it a minute. If the Giants had kept Kingman, he would never have ended up with the Cubs and would not have hit 3 HR's against the Dodgers that afternoon. Nobody would have stuck a microphone in Fat Tommy's face and asked him what he thought of Kingman's performance. Hundreds of Hollywood parties would have come up short on entertainment without the tape of Lasorda's response. One of my favorite moments in the entire history of baseball! I actually listened to that game on the radio while I was working in the yard of my parents home during a summer break.

A little footnote to trades 1 and 2: If recollection serves, the Giants turned around and included Frank Duffy in the Perry-for-McDowell trade. Because, you know, Perry couldn't match up with McDowell straight up. I think Duffy started for the Indians for a couple of years; an adequate, light-hitting shortstop.

I remember watching ol' Sudden Sam, after they'd given up on him as a starter and briefly tried to convert him to a flamethrowing closer, and it did seem he could still light it up for a few batters in a row. I suspect it was more bottle than UCL.

On yet another footnote, then manager Charlie Fox had scouted McDowell in a prior life and was furious when the Giants didn't land him; McDowell became his "white whale," as y'all say, and Fox was instrumental in pressuring management to close the deal.

I just remember McDowell getting lit up in spring training and complaining of elbow pain. The explanation in the Chronicle was "adhesions" and it was supposedly no big deal, something that happens to all pitchers every spring. Well, if that was true, how come I had never heard of it before and how come other pitchers weren't getting lit up? I've always been just a bit bitter over that explanation. Over the years, I've just come to assume that it must have been something more than just "adhesions", like maybe adhesions from a pre-existing UCL injury that broke loose for good? I don't know. I never saw him pitch on TV or in person for the Giants, so I really can't say. I know loss of velocity is a sign of UCL injury, so maybe it was something else.

I think Chub Feeney knew what he was doing, but then he moved up to the league office. I think Horace Stoneham more or less served as his own GM after that. By that time, yes, he was drunk and stupid. First, the Latin American pipeline dried up, then the African-American pipeline. When you think of all the great players who came up through the Giants organization, then won pennants and World Series for other teams, it makes you want to cry. It hurts a little less now that they've won 2 rings.

Love the old timers chipping in with knowledge. Only 2 of those trades took place in my real time memory as a Gints fan. I have no idea how they felt personally, but I've sure heard a lot about them. I can still remember the look of the green on the Jack Clark trade though. i remember being excited about it too. The AJ trade was sort of a blur, restocking for another run with Barry. I think Alou did have it out for Nathan, and I wish they gave Yorvit a chance. Impatient to win quick, not trusting your draft and development guys.

Man, looking at the talent in the 60s-80s the Gigantes gave up, the only thing you can conclude is that George Genovese was the greatest scout of all time and belongs in the hall of fame. The curse of Genovese: no home grown OFs since Peter the Pink threw the pink slip.

Well, Jack Clark was not without his faults. Getting 4 for 1, including a very promising SS prospect, you had to think it might be nice move for the future. Alas, David Green just killed that trade for the Giants side. I think the deal with him was he was a lot older than his stated age and the Giants got snookered by that.

My lasting memory of Joe Nathan with the Giants was of him being so freaked out by Alou that he could not bring himself to deliver a pitch in the playoff game against the Marlins. Threw to first base when there was no play on just to avoid having to come home with it. Alou took him out in the middle of the batter! No, I really don't think Nathan was going to ever be a closer for the Giants, at least as long as Alou was the manager.

Another trade I hated was the Deion Primetime Sanders trade. It went like this: Giants trade Dave Burba (RHP), Mark Portugal (RHP), Darren Lewis (OF), to Reds for Dave McCarty (1b) Ricky Pickett (LHP), John Roper (RHP), Primetime, and Scott Service (RHP).. I thought GM Bob Quinn needed to be replaced after this trade. The Giants got nothing out of this trade but I liked Primetime as a football player a lot better.

That trade was a salary dump. Losing Burba, who became a valuable relief pitcher for several teams, was the cost of offloading Portugal's millions. At the time I thought McCarty would be the key to the deal, since the Giants had no first basemen to speak of. Look how wrong you can be.

The one that always got me was Pete Falcone for Ken Reitz. Falcone was a 22-year old rookie lefthander who had just won 12 games for a bad Giants team. Reitz may have been the worst player in the major leagues. And the Giants already had a 3B, Steve Ontiveros, who had posted OBPs of .375 and .391 in two seasons. Now, Falcone never made it big due to injuries, but at the time, it was, "Who in tarnation makes a deal like this?!?" To cap the climax, the Giants then shipped Reitz out a year later for Lynn McGlothen, who may have been the worst *pitcher* in the major leagues.

About Me

I grew up in Northern California near the Napa Valley. I got interested in baseball and the Giants by listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons broadcast Giants games on KSFO. My early heros were Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal and a guy you don't always think of, Jim Ray Hart. When I got older and was in school and early career, I didn't have time to follow as closely, but I tried to look up their boxscores each day and catch an occasional game on TV. One habit I got into at an early age was looking up the stats of their minor league players in The Sporting News. That became more difficult as TSN moved away from comprehensive baseball coverage. Now, of course, technology and affluence has changed all that. The internet is teaming with farm system/minor league information as well as college and high school baseball. Satellite TV enables me to get most of the Giants games on TV. I'm married with 2 wonderful daughters, who like to watch games with me.